Post by fansfiltration on Oct 23, 2015 0:59:17 GMT -5

Nevada Radioactive Waste Facility Fire (October 2015)It could be some time before officials know what caused a fire at a low-level radioactive waste dump in Nye County that shut down a 140-mile stretch of Nevada's main north-south highway for almost 24 hours.

U.S. Highway 95 reopened to traffic Monday evening after tests conducted from the air and on the ground showed no signs of radioactive contamination from the blaze that broke out Sunday afternoon at the US Ecology waste site about 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

In a conference call Monday night, State Fire Marshal Chief Peter Mulvihill said investigators would be taking a close and methodical look at the site "once it is safe to go down there."

He said it's still too early to know what might have sparked the fire, which was reported about 1 p.m. Sunday in one of the site's low-level radioactive waste disposal trenches and was allowed to burn itself out over the course of about 12 hours.

Concerns about possible contamination from the fire prompted authorities to cancel school in the nearest town of Beatty and close U.S. 95 from state Route 160, about 70 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to the Nye County seat of Tonopah, 210 miles northwest of Las Vegas, about 7 p.m. Sunday.

US Ecology officials said they created "an exclusion zone around the facility" at the request of state regulators, but storms in the area Sunday night delayed efforts to survey the site from the air.

Federal aircraft that can detect radioactive particles conducted flights Monday morning, followed by a detection team on the ground that started in Beatty, 10 miles to the north, and worked its way to the waste facility.

Once it was determined that the fire was out and the surrounding area was safe from radioactive contamination, the highway was reopened about 5:30 p.m. Monday, releasing a flood of vehicles that had been trapped overnight in Beatty.

Mike Harmon, chief of the local volunteer fire department, said all of the motel rooms in town were filled with stranded travelers, and a line of vehicles a half-mile long was waiting at the road block for the highway to reopen.

He guessed there were 30 to 40 tractor-trailers parked along the road and packed into various parking lots in the town of about 1,000 people.

"It's pretty full," Harmon said.

Before the fire, flooding on roads throughout the area had already prompted the Nye County School District to cancel classes Monday in Amargosa Valley, about 20 miles south of US Ecology. The two public schools in Beatty were closed Monday as a precautionary response to the fire, said Cameron McRae, the district's director of transportation, maintenance and operations.

All Nye County schools were expected to open Tuesday.

The US Ecology site has served as a dump for low-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials since the early 1960s.

From 1983 to 1992, solid low-level radioactive waste primarily from hospitals and university research labs was buried there in dirt-covered trenches. It came from Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, the states that make up the Rocky Mountain Low-Level Radioactive Waste Board compact, according to Leonard Slosky, the board's executive director.

US Ecology stopped accepting radioactive waste in 1992, but it still takes in about 100,000 tons of hazardous waste per year from out-of-state and in-state sources.

A fire in one of the disposal trenches or in a facility near them would be "very unusual" because there are supposed to be no ignition sources in or around the waste, Slosky said.

Mulvihill said the fire burned a 40-to-50-foot area of the 40-acre site on state-owned land.

As part of their investigation, state officials said they will be looking at the overall stability of the more than 50-year-old dump.

The fire prompted a coordinated emergency response from Nye County and from Nevada's Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Public Safety, Highway Patrol, State Fire Marshal, National Guard, Department of Transportation, and Division of Environment Protection.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also sent an on-scene coordinator to the site.

Reports on the violations said that on at least two occasions operators observed smoke coming from a soils decontamination heating unit that resulted in the release of hazardous compounds into the air.

Inspectors also noted "six spills, leaks or other uncontrolled PCB discharges" between 2006 and 2008 that weren't reported as required by law, according to an EPA news release in 2010.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are toxic, organic pollutants that persist in the environment. They were once widely used in electrical transformers and capacitors but are no longer produced in the United States.

Post by fansfiltration on Oct 26, 2015 19:12:19 GMT -5

Las Vegas • The operator of a closed radioactive waste dump that caught fire in southern Nevada had trouble over the years with leaky shipments and oversight so lax that employees took contaminated tools and building materials home, according to state and federal records.

The firm, now called US Ecology Inc., had its license suspended for mishandling shipments in the 1970s — about the same time that state officials say the material that exploded and burned last weekend was accepted and buried.

Nevada now has ownership and oversight of the property, which opened in 1962 near Beatty as the nation's first federally licensed low-level radioactive waste dump and closed in 1992. State officials said this week they didn't immediately know what blew up.A soundless 40-second video turned over by US Ecology to state officials showed bursts of white smoke and dirt flying from several explosions on Oct. 18 from the dump in the brown desert about 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

A state fire inspector, Martin Azevedo, surveyed the site on Wednesday.

His report, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, described moisture in the pit and "heavily corroded" 55-gallon drums in and around the 20-foot-by-30-foot crater. Debris from the blast spread 190 feet. Two drums were found outside the fence line.

Jon Bakkedahl, state radiation control supervisor, said previously the material that exploded was probably buried in the mid-1970s.

Federal records say 4.7 million cubic feet of materials was buried before the 40-acre waste site closed. Officials say there are 22 trenches up to 100 feet deep and 800 feet long, with pits capped by up to 10 feet of clay and dirt.

US Ecology, which was formerly known as Nuclear Engineering Co., said this week the Nevada radiological waste facility operated "under a different name and different ownership," and referred questions about the fire to state officials. Nuclear Engineering Co. changed its name in 1981 to US Ecology.

The company today has 15 hazardous materials treatment, storage and disposal facilities around the country — including a 40-acre hazardous materials dump accepting toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, adjacent to the closed Beatty radioactive disposal site.

"We offer a service that is required for businesses to comply with complex state and federal regulatory requirements that were established to ensure waste is managed safely and properly," company spokesman Dave Crumrine said in email replies to questions.

Nevada state emergency management chief Caleb Cage said operating records for the damaged trench, No. 14, were in Department of Health and Human Services archives and weren't immediately available.

The scramble to find the paperwork illustrates problems posed by lax regulation and oversight in the years before and immediately after the federal Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1972. The Beatty dump is not an EPA superfund cleanup site.

"Regulations and waste management practices have evolved since the 1960s and 70s," a US Ecology statement noted.

Former Nevada Gov. Robert List ordered the Beatty low-level waste facility shut down in 1979 and launched a probe after a radioactive cargo fire on a truck parked on U.S. Highway 95 at the facility gate.

The fire came three years after employees were dismissed for pilfering radioactive building materials, tools and even a portable cement mixer, according to a 1994 report prepared by the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

Operations at Beatty resumed "only after assurance was given by the federal government that the rules governing shipments ... would be enforced," according to the Idaho lab report.

Post by fansfiltration on Oct 28, 2015 22:57:39 GMT -5

Shoutbox

This is NOT a forum for Hate Speech, Immature Games, or Politics (there are other forums for that, and it's NOT HERE! - Suspension will be Enforced>>> http://fukushimahounds.freeforums.net/thread/534/happens-new-hounds-snarl-respectful

starlight: Perfect and then some! Dana is burning through the cash on some top notch state of the art tech and for those who can afford to, every pound is cherished and used in this endeavour. Presentation is vital and he’s come so far!Dec 25, 2018 7:54:25 GMT -5

starlight: Posting the links in the chat now you have made the thread is perhaps a mistake, I say this in all good faith and only because eventually the chat will be erased by new chat posts which, though slow, require space of their own. Best wishes for 2019!Dec 29, 2018 10:08:48 GMT -5

millie: Hi, Starlight. No problem. I posted here because the thread is not visible to the outside world, just members apparently. I post in enough other places it's not a big deal. Thanks for the correction, and Happy New Year!Dec 29, 2018 12:15:26 GMT -5

starlight: Are you experiencing difficulties building a thread? For certain things such as expanding pictures one has to log in but building a thread is still possible I’m sure. Don’t give up just yet!Dec 29, 2018 22:29:33 GMT -5

starlight: Linking to YouTube here will result in slower page redraws over time on a thread as pages grow, so that’s frustrating! Linking to multiple vids in a single Dec 29, 2018 22:42:46 GMT -5

starlight: post will result in slow page redraw, cumbersome. So don’t try to post Dana’s entire output retrospectively but stuff you have a comment on .... might be a good balance? It’s tricky! I have just one thread and go there to post my contribution over time.Dec 29, 2018 22:49:01 GMT -5*

starlight: I chose pictures over YouTube links as a way to contribute and make it personal but that’s just me! Then one has to log in to expand my offering...ho hum! We have trolls who make this our reality I’m afraid!Dec 29, 2018 23:01:44 GMT -5